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The AFL National Championships is an annual Australian national underage representative Australian rules football tournament. It is seen as one of the main pathways towards being drafted into a team in the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL).

The competition was born out of the Teal Cup, which began in 1953 as a regular exhibition match between under-17 representative sides from Queensland and New South Wales. Interstate teams were first invited to compete from 1973 onwards, and by 1976 the tournament was co-branded as the Australian Football National Championships.

The tournament shifted to an entirely divisional format from 1992; teams last competed for the Teal Cup itself in 1995. Following an age limit extension to under-18 to align with the nascent TAC Cup, the tournament continued in its dual-division setup for the next two decades, expanding to host games all around the nation concurrently.

From 2017, the competition has been contested as a hybrid representative format. South Australia, Western Australia and two Victorian teams – Metro and Country – compete in a single-division round-robin tournament alongside the Allies, a composite team made up of the top players from the AFL Academy Series.

History
Originally known as the Teal Cup, it began in 1953 as a junior representative competition between the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales. It was an annual match between the two states, the winners would possess a trophy donated by the Teale family of Queensland. The Australian Capital Territory was the first other side to enter in 1973. With the addition of teams from each Australian state and mainland territory in 1976, the tournament was rebranded as the National Championships and rotated between host cities. The championships were split into two divisions with the strongest states including Victoria (later split into two sides: Vic Metro and Vic Country) comprising Division 1. Papua New Guinea was the only international team to field a side, entering in 1979.

The tournament continued to grow in stature in the 1980s, with Victoria unsurprisingly dominating the competition. By 1987, the Teal Cup was described by ACT team manager Des Bird as "the most prestigious junior football cup in Australia". Western Australia was forced to withdraw from the 1990 edition due to rising costs, citing a $55,000 figure to send its representative squad to Brisbane for the week-long carnival. Talent scouts had long visited the Teal Cup each year, and by 1992 one journalist penned the competition as "the best chance for those coming of age to make a case for selection [in the AFL]".

The competition received its first sponsorship when it was branded as the Commonwealth Bank Cup in 1993. By the following year, seasoned AFL recruiters would describe the week of Teal Cup competition the most important in their calendar.

Larke Medal
The Michael Larke Memorial Medal, commonly known as the Larke Medal, is awarded to the best player in Division 1 of the competition. It is named in honour of a junior footballer, Michael Larke, who was killed in a bus crash while attending a trial match for New South Wales.

Hunter Harrison Medal
The Hunter Harrison Medal is awarded to the best player in Division 2 and is named in honour of a former president and life member of the Northern Territory Football League, Hunter Harrison, who played a major role in the development of the AFL Youth Championships. Each tournament, an underage All-Australian team is named; an MVP is also named for each team.

Sponsors
The tournament is currently sponsored by the National Australia Bank, having previously been sponsored by Caltex and the Commonwealth Bank.